U.S. Pat. No. 3,315,331, issued Apr. 25, 1967, describes the steps of forming wire into a U or hair-pin shaped lead wire subassembly, feeding the subassembly so formed, round or bent end first, through pairs of longitudinally extended slits in a carrier strip, and advancing the strip to a series of forming stations at which disc-shaped capacitors are joined to the leads with one electrode joined to one lead of each pair of leads forming a subassembly. Thereafter, the rounded or bent end portion of each subassembly is cut off, and the capacitors are tested and stamped with suitable coding indicia. The present invention relates to improvements in the techniques for lead wire forming and for placement of the lead wire subassemblies on the carrier strip. In contrast to the process just described, the present invention forms the U-shaped lead wire subassemblies so that the free ends of the wire of each subassembly point towards paired spaced-apart openings in the carrier strip, and feeds the free ends through the transversely-spaced pairs of openings into proper position on the strip.